#familyproject Archives | Six Wheels of Adventures

Skinning Continued

This week we continued skinning the bus. Since it is a two person job, we can only do this when we are both available at the same time. Saturday afternoon after archery and Sunday afternoon after church it is!.

First sheet going on the back of the driver’s side

Definitely a marriage builder….

As of now, we have the sheets on both sides of the bus in place. It makes it look so much better on both the inside and the outside!

Need more steel

It looks like we are slightly short of plate so we will have to get another sheet. We skinned a few of the window openings as well; one on each side of the future bedroom and one where the shower is going to be. That will leave space to install a fan so we keep the humidity out of the bus when we clean ourselves up.

We finished the door frame of the little door. Whenever we have a small sheet available we will put the extended door in place.

We welded two more bars inside of the bus to attach the top of the sheets that are covering the disability door. It all looks nicely closed up now

First sheets!

This week we managed to get the first few sheets of steel on the side of the bus. We figured out that all those strengthened supports now won’t take any of the said-to-be self-tapping screws from China due to the thickness of the added steel. If it’s not too thin, it’s too thick. Looks like we will be returning the screws to China.

Raise the first panel

Family work day

The girls came out on Saturday and started to clean the bus window frames so we can put everything back nice and clean after we are done with the siding. Even N helped sweep up to keep the storage area clean. Meanwhile, R dismantled some of the strengtheners from the wheelchair door that we will put back on the bus.

Getting the sheets in place is a two-person job. Blinding off the (former) wheelchair opening gave us quite some trouble. Lining up the steel without leaving gaps was not an easy task. On top of that, the adhesive sealant made a big mess on the steel as well as on us.

Luckily, we won’t be able to see it when it is all painted on the outside and covered up on the inside. The first corner transition was added at the door as well. It seems that the bending brake we bought is not suitable to bend 18 gauge steel, so we went one size smaller. This won’t affect anything since the corner sheets are merely covering the gaps and don’t really have a structural purpose. Slowly but surely, we are putting the bus back together.